They sat trying to think some alleviation into their misery. Presently she snatched herself away from him.
"It's such a beastly, slinking sort of way to die! In a bed—sick and ill! Why can't they have wars—so that I could die quick on a battlefield? You wouldn't have time to be getting cold beforehand, then. Louis, it's like father, lying in bed till his poor heart was drowned. Louis—Oh—"
She stopped, breathless. Her eyes narrowed; she was thinking deep down.
"I wonder if it's—necessary?"
He shook himself impatiently.
"How can pain and illness ever be necessary?"
"They may be—perhaps not to the sufferer, you know," she said, and would not explain what she meant. She was seeing pictures of herself praying for weakness—and of burning Feet—
"I wish Andrew had come with us. Is there time to send for him?" she said presently.
"Every day is important now," he said, choked.
"Yes. I've not to be sentimental," she said, and tried not to grieve him as she remembered very vividly her own sick misery when her father and mother were ill and there was nothing she could do.